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Let’s look at CanWest's B.C. Election coverage – campaigning flat-out for the reactionary Gordon Campbell Liberal government. But first, a few notes on CanWest’s devotion to sleaze. The first example is in the CanWest (flagship) National Post (Feb 6 05 FP11). The article is two columns wide and almost the full length of the page – they want you to read it. It’s by Paul Kedrosky and is called “Enron’s excellent Albertan adventure.” We may remember Alberta’s energy situation was massively manipulated so that prices sky-rocketed, and Enron is alleged to have made $45 million in one day. We remember, too, that prices rose so high so fast that the Alberta government used taxpayers’ money to give householders some rebate. What does Paul Kedrosky say about the story? He can’t praise Enron enough. [It did “precisely what a profit-seeking company should do,” and did “nothing blatantly illegal (yet).”] Who was at fault? Not Enron. The Alberta government was at fault for not de-regulating energy faster in Alberta (to let the sharks really go to work on the population). What Kedrosky bases his argument upon is that private corporations (Enron is his example) should have no public conscience, no public responsibility. If they can find a loophole that allows despicable, immoral activity, “nothing blatantly illegal,” they should go at it full speed. If they get away with brazen betrayal of public trust, that’s the fault of the peoples’ democratically elected representatives who don’t think like thieves and so don’t manage to close all opportunities for sleazy and immoral corporate activity. Kedrosky’s article characterizes the “social leadership” provided by the CanWest Global Communications Corp. Then there’s the sewer-rat view of democratic political responsibility as presented by Michael Smyth in the (CanWest) Vancouver Province (Feb 22 05 A6). Happily recording the B.C. Liberal Party’s tsunami of campaign riches for unfettered use in campaign activity, Smyth almost gloats that the NDP leader Carole James “is left behind to eat Liberal dust.” He is happy that the Liberal’s bankrolling “by big business” is providing endless funds for so-called non-government campaigning. Injustice? Don’t be sentimental. If the Liberals can buy the election, isn’t that what democracy is all about? “I’m pleased they’re doing it,” says Gordon Campbell. And, by jingo, there’s another CanWest B.C. columnist who just happens to have a comment by Gordon Campbell made to fit his story. In an earlier column I said that for CanWest the undeclared B.C. Election is already on. And I said with all CanWest monopoly papers in B.C. working full-time in editorial and news story space to elect the Gordon Campbell government, Campbell doesn’t need to spend a cent on advertising – he has a whole newspaper empire campaigning for him. But in B.C. advertising is unlimited, uncontrolled, unregulated; and so advertising will be added. The news and the editorials will be campaign material for the Campbell Liberals and the majority of ads will be Corporation – (please, say Liberal Party) – advertising for the Campbell Liberals. In addition, in B.C., CanWest uses a combination of “dumbing down” and manipulation of the “information” it does let through. The examples occur daily and are countless. Have the operators of the B.C. CanWest newspapers been given specific orders to manufacture stories on behalf of the Campbell Liberals? It looks like it. All the major B.C. (CanWest of course) dailies are trumpeting an excellent state of B.C. Finances – over and over and over. But in an op-ed piece in the Victoria Times Colonist (Feb 15 05 A11), Don Scot, a public policy analyst, explains how the Campbell Liberals have swiftly pushed the increase in B.C.’s debt and have created a so-called “surplus” largely doubling health care premiums and engaging in other thefts from lower-earning British Columbians. Taxpayer-supported debt especially has risen. This is partly because the Campbell government is doing what it can to privatize Crown corporations, erasing money generation formerly there for government. The profitable Crowns go to private corporations, and the debt load is dumped on average British Columbians. Complain about the hundreds of columns of almost naked propaganda for the Liberals, and CanWest will no doubt point out the op-ed piece just mentioned. See: balanced reporting and commentary. Needless to say, a week later there is a front page story in the Colonist about the debt load (Feb 22 05 ). Going to corporate interests, the CanWest propagandists produce a story soothing British Columbians and telling them all is well. No mention of privatizations and loss of government revenue. No mention of the shift of tax burden (in one form or another) onto ordinary British Columbians, of course. Just “go to sleep; all is well.” Let’s look at a three-page, undeclared advertisement for Campbell re-election in the Vancouver Sun, offered as a dispassionate, objective, balanced news analysis of the Campbell government’s record to date. It is purportedly written by Craig McInnis (Sun Feb 5 05 C1, C2, C3). I say “purportedly” because it could have come straight from Gordon Campbell’s own office. Sad as it sounds, being a paid employee of CanWest Corp in B.C. is very much the same as being a paid employee in Gordon Campbell’s office. The disguised “info-advertisement” - if handed to you as a pamphlet in the street - would be accepted as designed, organized, and presented to be an election campaign pamphlet for the Gordon Campbell Liberals – and here it is a three-page, objective “news” story in the Sun. (1) Throughout the three pages, Campbell, or cabinet colleagues, are quoted directly, saying wise or statesmanlike things. No opponent is quoted – not once. In three pages, there is not one intelligent critical comment from the mouth of a real person. (2) McInnis “reports” critical response. In that way he can control it, place it to downplay it, offer it as mildly irrelevant. (3) Photographs of cabinet ministers are always flattering. There is no picture of Gordon Campbell’s drunk-arrest photo. Strangely, a picture of John Van Dongen is reproduced. He stepped aside as Agriculture minister during a police investigation, was exonerated, and returned to office. Small news at the time. But there is no picture of Gordon Hogg, Minister of Children and Families, forced to resign over a huge scandal; no picture of Kevin Falcon, Minister of Transportation, overseeing the scandal-ridden privatization of B.C. Rail. (4) A running calendar is presented of “notable events in the B.C. Liberals’ term of office” to date. Huge, important facts are erased. The early defection of an MLA outraged at Campbell’s attempt to privatize B.C. Hydro is not mentioned. Nothing in the calendar mentions the huge scandal in Children and Families. In the section on Children and Families, too, the round-up doesn’t mention the family relation of Gordon Campbell who was “placed” in the ministry and became involved in a $1 million-plus scandal of misused funds. Exposure brought about the firing of the deputy minister and the resignation of the minister. NOT A WORD of that in the story by Craig McInnis. In a feat of manipulation and sleight-of-hand, the scandal-ridden sale (in fact) of B.C. Rail to CN is described as a 90-year lease (no scandal mentioned). Only constant warfare over the sale of B.C. Rail revealed that the so-called 90-year lease can be extended for 1000 years! McInnis makes no mention of that information. The famous RCMP raid on legislature offices is not connected to the sale of B.C. Rail – as it should be; nor does McInnis mention that the raid has resulted in at least 12 charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery in relation to the B.C. Rail sell-off. Of the vicious privatization and savaging of humane services in B.C., slashing already minimal wages of health support workers, McInnis describes those ideologically driven attacks on the vulnerable (both the care workers and the cared for) as “changes [Campbell] believed were needed to make the system sustainable while improving access to care.” Not a single person in British Columbia (but Craig McInnis, it seems) believes “access to care” has been improved at any level in B.C. In only one place in the three pages does McInnis let some truth in – and that happens by accident. The Gordon Campbell cabinet “recognized that academically, the schools were working reasonably well.” But the cabinet (McInnis doesn’t say) (a) wants to privatize education, (b) wants to starve the public system, and (c) wants to insult and demean the excellent teachers in the system. And so the public education system, McInnis reports, “had to be wrestled away from the politically hostile force – the B.C. Teachers Federation.” He says nothing about the continuing attack on public education by the Gordon Campbell government. Nor does he say what is the concensus in B.C. - that public education has suffered sadly at the hands of the Campbell Liberal government. The situation is, however, so bad that McInnis writes: “It has been difficult to tell definitively whether conditions have improved or deteriorated in the schools.” That is not a ridiculous comment. It is a stupid one. By McInnis’s own statement: “The schools were working reasonably well.” Now the schools are not working reasonably well; teachers and parents are furious. No one is reasonably content. Presented as “news” the three pages are a campaign pamphlet for the Gordon Campbell Liberals. Finally, think of – in the calendar of events – the first major act of Campbell sleaze. In his first days as premier, Campbell refused opposition status to the two NDP women who, in fact, made up the opposition. Campbell’s refusal was undemocratic, ungentlemanly, cynical, power-grabbing. Not a mention in Craig Mcinnis’s calendar of events. If one had a very broad sense of humour, one might get some amusement out of the meeting of Gordon Campbell Liberal sleaze and CanWest Global Communications Corp sleaze. They vie with one another for the lead in sleaze. What don’t the CanWest papers tell British Columbians? Anything they really need to make a decision about their vote in May: There is no regulatory body to which CanWest sleaze can be referred. The failure of federal governments to enact legislation to prevent corporate concentration in the press and media places British Columbians (and other Canadians) in the ugly situation I have described – to be served by a monopoly press that champions the worst reactionary government and that offers its yellow journalism as “news”. The only action voters can take against CanWest is to throw out the Campbell Liberal government of B.C. in May, and then demand legislation to break up the CanWest conglomerate, a “repressive regime” in Canada. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on March 2, 2005]